Odd Treasure Troves

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by weswood

Then there's stumbling across a deserted Mormon house. I'f I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to keep a years food on hand.

We're supposed to...but I know of only a handful in my area who actually do. My family and I don't, largely because we live in an apartment and there is no room for such a cache.

What you almost always can find in the home of an LDS member, however, is a Ward or Stake directory...a phone book listing the addresses of other church members in the area. Somebody in that book is likely to have a large cache of food...

...assuming that it is still there. In the event of an emergency along the lines of the Twilight War, many LDS members will "circle the wagons" and gather at the church building with whatever food and other supplies they can bring with them. Many LDS members become active locally in disaster response organizations such as CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) or are even volunteer firefighters, so they tend to have that equipment as well.

Not that marauders would find them to be an easy target...a respectably large percentage of LDS males tend to serve at least one hitch in the military, and a significant percentage of those serve that hitch in some branch of combat arms in not some special operations component. (Without going into details, the Elders' Quorum alone in my own Ward claims nearly a dozen combat veterans among those members with prior military service, including three former Rangers and one ex-Special Forces medic. That doesn't count the veterans in the High Priests' Quorum, nor the female military veterans among the Relief Society.)

[sglancy12]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

We're supposed to...but I know of only a handful in my area who actually do. My family and I don't, largely because we live in an apartment and there is no room for such a cache.

What you almost always can find in the home of an LDS member, however, is a Ward or Stake directory...a phone book listing the addresses of other church members in the area. Somebody in that book is likely to have a large cache of food...

...assuming that it is still there. In the event of an emergency along the lines of the Twilight War, many LDS members will "circle the wagons" and gather at the church building with whatever food and other supplies they can bring with them.

In the TW2000 campaign/timeline/gazeteer I have been fiddling with for years, rumors about giant Mormon stashes of food lead to LDS folks being the targets of a lot of marauders, many of whom mix in a bunch of the standard anti-Mormon hysteria to justify killing and stealing from Mormons. Many Mormons are ejected from their communities for "hoarding." Those that can begin the long trek to the relative security of Utah do so. But they are not the only people headed to Utah.

Groups of Non-LDS refugees flood into Utah on the false presumption that every Mormon family has stocked away food for three years. Told by state and local authorities that this is not true, concentrated in under-fed refugee camps, these refugees ultimately riot and turn marauder. This invasion by violent, desperate non-LDS members shocks the citizens of Utah into taking on a very isolationist stance. Non-LDS Utah residents get the same treatment from the out-of-state marauders who think everyone in Utah is a Mormon.

Utah residents are tortured for the whereabouts of their giant "Mormon" stashes by marauders too stupid to realize there is nothing to steal.

Per canon, the State Governor withholds the National Guard from Federal Service and (although they refuse to actually say they are seceding) refuses to recognize the authority of MilGov or CigGov.

In my timeline, this causes a lot of bad blood with MilGov (which is closer), but no outright combat. MilGov has a couple airbases that are still manned that the Utah State Government is hoping MilGov will abandon so the state can occupy them. Some of those bases have nuclear weapons and MilGov wants to remove them to Colorado for storage, but without the State government's help, transporting them could be precarious. The result is a tense stand off that's not quite a siege, but more of an endurance contest. Can the MilGov facilities hold out until such time as one Federal government has enough resources to force Utah back into the union?

Well, maybe not "force them back into the union." Maybe it's more like "get them to recognize the legitimate authority of the new federal government." I'm imagining that if the reformed US government isn't a religious state hostile to the LDS, then the state of Utah will rejoin the union, and pretend that this was all just a big misunderstanding.

Of course, there are plenty of LDS extremist who want to declare Utah the State of Deseret, creating a nation where church and state are one, bring back polygamy and kick the "children of Ham" out of the church. A violent minority, they are sort of a mini-New America for Utah, constantly causing trouble. Perhaps the Extremists even attempt to provoke a shooting war between MilGov and Utah? If these idiots gain control of any nukes, they are going to be serious trouble. They might even use it to try and stage a coup, seizing the state house and declaring a real secession from the USA.

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

Not that marauders would find them to be an easy target...a respectably large percentage of LDS males tend to serve at least one hitch in the military, and a significant percentage of those serve that hitch in some branch of combat arms in not some special operations component. (Without going into details, the Elders' Quorum alone in my own Ward claims nearly a dozen combat veterans among those members with prior military service, including three former Rangers and one ex-Special Forces medic. That doesn't count the veterans in the High Priests' Quorum, nor the female military veterans among the Relief Society.)

Well that's good to hear, but I'm still thinking that enough minority LDS communities and individual members are going to get caught flat footed outside Utah and the tide of numbers is going to result in them being injured, killed and their homes and property looted and destroyed. Nevertheless, it does mean that the Utah National Guard and State Militia will have a lot of talent to pull from when it comes time to close the state.

I'd be interested to know what percentage of fringe-wacko LDS members participate in national military service. I expect that since these groups are insular, and secret, they wouldn't get out much and their access to Uncle Sam's training would be lower... which is good. It means that the orthodox LDS would be fighting amateurs, not professionals. Of course, amateurs can suprise you.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing